15

I have an ancient Mac that I'm looking at wiping when Lion support goes the way of the dinosaur. I still like the idea of keeping it as Mac-like as possible.

Are there any Linux distros that mimic to a very large degree OS X functionality? Interface bears more importance than under the hood development.

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    Since its a mac, what processor? If its a PPC model, your needs are going to be VERY different. You can also, reasonably simply hack together a mac-like theme off a basic cli only install.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Feb 10, 2014 at 7:25
  • I think that the real question is "which DE/WM is similar to OS X's".
    – Braiam
    Apr 2, 2014 at 23:21

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
8

EDIT: Clementine OS is now long dead. Please disregard this answer, and use eOS or something instead.

Clementine OS aims to be as similar as possible to Mac OSX -- it boasts many of the same features, such as expose, and is visually almost the same. It comes from a now discontinued (sold) project called Pear Linux and has an interface virtually identical to that of Apple. Here is a screenshot:

Clementine OS UI

If you just want an Apple-like interface, I think I will go so far as to say that Clementine OS is perfect -- Oops! I just did --, although you may not like the Mavericks-style.

Under the hood, it is based on Ubuntu, so it is nice and stable and has a lot of available packages.

Improve this answer
5
  • 2
    Clementine OS is no longer available. The German website heise.de posted this headline today: heise.de
    – Irgendw Pointer
    Feb 7, 2014 at 12:34
  • You can still use the themes and programs on Ubuntu, though. I expect.
    – MadTux
    Feb 7, 2014 at 14:44
  • Screen-shoots present Pear OS Linux which is also unavailable nowadays.
    – danijelc
    Feb 10, 2014 at 1:48
  • hmmmm, looks more like a parody (imho)
    – Display Name
    Mar 27, 2014 at 17:36
  • 1
    It seems that Clementine Linux is no longer active and the download link is broken (I was unable to find an updated link)
    – Tom
    Jan 7, 2016 at 1:03
11

Elementary Luna OS aims to be as "Mac-like" as possible. It's built for usability and to visually look like Mac OS X.

Elementary Luna OS UI
Click to view in higher resolution

Etoile is a Linux distro aimed at using the GNUStep project to do system tasks, thus allowing a vaguely similar programming environment to Cocoa. While more similar to NextStep in terms of visual style, it will have some familiarity from a programming perspective.

Improve this answer
1
  • I don't understand why people says that elementary is looking like mac. What is common in between mac and elementary? Is a dock all about being like Mac OS X?
    – niyasc
    Mar 27, 2015 at 11:55
9

When I first got my MacBook Pro at the end of last year, I thought its UI was very similar to Unity (the default desktop environment in Ubuntu). Now, Unity is not 100% like Mac, but I think it's very close in many ways, especially when compared with most other distros. The top menu bar, the dock, the Settings app, etc. Here's a screenshot:

Unity screenshot

(I took the screenshot on my Retina display MacBook Pro, and unfortunately, Unity currently doesn't support HiDPI displays yet, so things look a little out of proportion. But I'm hoping that come 14.04 LTS release time, this will have ironed itself out.)

Here's another screenshot, showing the top menu:

Showing the top menu

The top menu style is quite reminiscent of the Mac UI, but with two differences:

  1. There is no Apple menu.
  2. The Alt-Tab task switcher is still window-centric (though windows are grouped by their owning application), not application-centric. This probably won't make a huge difference to you unless you're wedded to the "every application is basically MDI" aspect of the Mac UI.

Update: My boss tells me that Ubuntu 14.04 now does support HiDPI displays! Here's a screenshot of Unity (with Firefox 29 beta, that also supports HiDPI) running on his MacBook Pro 15 with Retina:

Yay, Ubuntu 14.04 has HiDPI support!

(I'll get around to updating the other screenshots soon.)

Improve this answer
0